Can no one in Britain be trusted to run an election campaign?

As another American heads for London, perhaps we’ve reached the limits of openness (Photo: Reuters)

Somewhere along the District Line – Embankment, I think, or perhaps South Ken – a Frenchman is often in charge of the platform and announces the latest train to Upminster with the confidence of a Cockney and the ’Allo ’Allo accent of René Artois. His is far from being the only foreign-born voice on the Underground, but I sometimes ask my French friends what the chances would be of the Paris Metro hiring an Englishman and putting him in charge of the trains at Gare du Nord. “Ça va pas, non?” – “Are you crazy?” – is the usual reply, as if the very suggestion of trusting someone from abroad with a task of such importance was a surefire sign of madness.

To judge by the way the outside world has found its way into every corner of British life, we prefer to consider it a sign of strength, evidence of our unrestrained openness, and proof that in an age of globalisation this country is – to use the cliché beloved of our politicians – open for business. We are indeed the world. Britain is experiencing a degree of ease about what we might call foreignisation that goes far beyond our well-established record as a trading nation unafraid of others or their goods, however exotic. We hold the door open to let them in, when we aren’t touring the globe cap in hand in search of foreign cash.

As I write this, a gang of raucous rose-ringed parakeets (origin: India) are racing around the tree of heaven (China) behind my house in this part of central London, relishing the Easter Monday sunshine. Along with Japanese knotweed they are – in the eyes of conservationists – among the invaders of the British natural world who are transforming our environment, although some arrived on our shores in the 18th century, the last time we went through a phase of obsession with chinoiserie and all things oriental.

London was cosmopolitan long before any other city, well used to absorbing different faces. We accept strangers running our trains with the same equanimity that we invited first a Dutchman and then a German to take the throne. Chicken korma, taramasalata and cappuccinos are our staples. But years from now we will no doubt look back on the turn of this century and the years that followed as a period of extraordinary, even reckless, submission to the lure of all that is different.

If free trade is in our DNA, then we prove it by our willingness to put a price tag on everything: Weetabix, Cadbury’s, Ribena, Lucozade and even Branston Pickle are all in foreign hands, as are Jaguar/Land Rover, Battersea Power Station, the Shard, the electricity driving the laptop on which I write, and the company that sweeps David Cameron’s doorstep. China has been given a chunk of our nuclear power programme, and allowed to penetrate deep into our IT infrastructure. National security is not an insurmountable obstacle to trade. Nor is national pride.

Fear does nothing to dim our appetite for what is out there. Nigel Farage and his UK Independence Party have skilfully transformed themselves from a party campaigning about Europe to one preoccupied with immigration, with troubling consequences for the Tories and Labour. In parts of the country, the mass migration that is the most significant legacy of Labour’s pursuit of an economic boom has strained communities. The “otherness” of militant Islam disturbs and is scarcely accommodated. Yet none of these qualifications appears to dent our capacity, if not our willingness, to absorb change – qualitative and quantitative – from wherever it comes.

Politics is particularly vulnerable to the urge to look elsewhere for ideas and inspiration. When Tony Blair was in Downing Street, Westminster was transfixed by the American series The West Wing, which told of the everyday excitements in a Democrat-controlled White House. I remember arranging an autographed photograph of the actress who played the press secretary for the prime minister’s spokesman to pin on his wall.

Despite the recent fashion for the Danish coalition drama Borgen, American politics still transfixes our political classes. They develop relationships across the Atlantic, attend Republican and Democrat conventions, and seek the wisdom of the big players in Washington. George Osborne, the Coalition’s greatest free-trader, surprised not just us but the world by putting the Bank of England in the hands of the Canadian Mark Carney. Only yesterday we learnt that Francis Maude, the minister for the Cabinet Office, has been trawling Silicon Valley for hi-tech ideas to transform the way Whitehall works. He has asked Google, Netflix and others for ideas on digital government, and is particularly enthusiastic about Facebook’s “move fast and break things”, though I’m not sure how keen David Cameron will be when future policies get smashed in the trying.

A few days ago, Labour announced that it had hired David Axelrod – or Alexrod, as the press release unwittingly had it – the Democrat strategist credited with inventing Barack Obama, winning him the White House, and keeping him there. He will be paid six figures to share his secrets with Ed Miliband, largely by email and videoconference. For a six-figure sum – we don’t know quite how big, but remember the party is nearly bust – he will tell Labour that the message is the candidate, that grassroots activism is essential, that the rich and powerful are the bad guys, and that the internet should play an important part in the general election campaign. I exaggerate for effect, but it is tempting to conclude that Mr Axelrod has been hired solely for his name and the effect it will have on the foreign advisers arms race begun when Mr Cameron hired the Australian Lynton Crosby to run the Tory campaign, and Nick Clegg followed by employing South African Ryan Coetzee to do the same for the Lib Dems. Labour was particularly keen to retaliate when the Tories persuaded another Democrat rainmaker, Jim Messina, to sell them his expertise.

Might this eagerness to contract out our politics and government to foreigners be the point where we discover the limits of openness? Politics, after all, is first and foremost a closed conversation between governed and those who aspire to govern. It requires a common bond that blends something of citizenship, tax paid, and shared lives in a common society. It also requires politicians with a clear message and confidence in themselves, capable of looking the voters in the eye and winning them over with a compelling argument. Alex Salmond and Nigel Farage both succeed because they have found a patter that catches the ear. Neither may withstand close scrutiny, but in an age when politicians are despised, their ability to connect with the electorate rewards close study.

Neither Mr Miliband nor Mr Cameron at heart want to import either the data-driven paid political advertising that helped win Mr Obama power, or the poisonous divisions that have left the Republicans in a mess. Nor can it be the case that there is no one in Britain capable of organising a persuasive and successful general election campaign for any party. Democratic politics is indeed our greatest export but perhaps, as with vast chunks of manufacturing, we have lost the skill and now rely on outsiders to tell us how to do it properly.

Is it a sign of strength or weakness? Openness? Or madness? It may be simply that we are too preoccupied by the global race to notice that our politics are increasingly imported too, and that we are led by politicians who have become so beholden to the mechanics of politics – the polls, the media management, the focus groups – that they no longer have confidence in their own beliefs and must look abroad for their vision and their credibility.